Chips, NUCs and other gems

Intel’s Developer Forum 2014 was strangely muted. The company competed for attention with the Apple Watch and other announcements. Also, because Intel had announced its Broadwell technology just weeks before, the anticipation that accompanied many past IDF conferences simply wasn’t there.

That doesn’t mean IDF was a bust, however. Browsing the booths and tech sessions, there was a surprising amount of technology on stage—such as the Intel Core M chips held up by Intel exec Kirk Skaugen (left), or its successor, Skylake.

12K multimonitor gaming

Remember when a game running at a 1024x768 resolution was something special? A 2K display is impressive. And the new 4K monitors? Mind-blowing. So why not three?

Yep. Intel showed off a rig running—according to a booth representative—two Haswell-E processors: the 8-core, 16-thread 5960X, and the 6-core, 12-thread 5930K. Combined, the two powered a 12K demo of Assassins Creed 4: Black Flag, with three 4K monitors running side by side. Inside the box was a true quad SLI setup using four Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan Blacks, taking up a total of 40 PCI-E lanes. Which is a long-winded way of saying awesome.

NUC, meet the "half NUC"

Intel’s Next Units of Computing offer a tiny little take on desktop computing, squeezing a bare-bones PC inside something about as small as a package of ramen noodles. And yes, even a next-generation Broadwell chip. But if that’s too much, then consider a “half NUC.” With an Atom chip packed inside, this is for those who don’t want to pay extra for Intel’s next-gen Core chips, as cool as they might be.

Eye in the sky

Some of you may have been tempted to watch Eagle Eye, Shia LeBeouf’s take on a CCTV society run amok. But the future is here—and it’s advertised. Intel showed off a traffic analytics solution from an undisclosed partner that could track video of individuals walking down a street or in a parking lot—and apparently make guesses as to their gender and other personal information. Always watching, quietly judging...

Air sensors as squirrel food

The plastic boxes mounted in or near Hyde Park in London ran into two unexpected problems: Insatiably curious squirrels pillaged the boxes, so the researchers began using metal chasses. For the boxes located too close to the street, everything not soldered down was jarred loose by the constant vibration. Squirrels: not exactly a problem that everyone plans for.

The iKeg

Who wouldn't want a keg that would signal you when empty, and automatically request a replacement after being tapped out? Such was the justification for the iKeg, which Intel showed off at its Developer Forum. It's research. Yeah.

Dell Venue 8 7000 tablet makes RealSense real

Like the Microsoft Kinect, the RealSense's dual lenses let the camera see like our own two eyes do—calculating distance and depth.

This 8-inch tablet and its full 2K display are lovely. Intel's developed apps that can "measure" something just by "looking" at it. If this is what we can expect from the next generation of tablets, sign us up.

Kid and Plae

One of the companies that's going to use the RealSense technology is Plae, a manufacturer of custom children's footwear. Plae executives said they can use the RealSense camera technology to estimate foot size within just a few millimeters, so people may confidently buy shoes over the Internet after they've scanned their feet.

LenovoPad Tab S8, powered by Merrifield

Intel's next-generation Merrifield chip may not have a future in smartphones, but it can do just fine in a tablet. At IDF, Intel showed off several unreleased tablets powered by Merrifield. The first is this Lenovo tablet, encased in a colorful yellow plastic shell.

A label on the back identified this tablet as the Lenovo "Sparks," which may or may not be a code name.

LenovoPad Tab S8 specs

Intel Health app

Intel's clearly invested time in developing its own software to take advantage of its processors' capabilities. Remember, Intel has an entire software division within it, that it picked up from a company called Wind River a few years back. This Intel Health app doesn't look half bad.

Intel's phone security technology

A form of Intel's Identity Protection Technology already appears in laptops, and now the company is moving it into smartphones and tablets. Normally, banks will ask customers to provide a second form of identifcation by issuing them a dongle, which provides a time-limited security code in addition to a password. Intel's technology uses the smartphone as the token, allowing the user simply to tap a code that's been sent to it to identify the user to a bank or shopping site.

Intel's Edison chip

If wearables are the next big thing, then it's the "Edison" chip that Intel hopes will power them. At IDF, Intel said that its Edison chip was shipping. Edison, a member of Intel's embedded Quark family of chips, is tiny—about the size of a quarter, complete with motherboard. Intel hopes that "makers" will pay about $50 apiece for an Edison chip and development board, coming up with their own unique ideas, like...

Don't mess with the dress

This lovely, futuristic 'Synapse' mind-controlled dress is powered by Intel's Edison chip. Designed by Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht, it's 3D-printed to fit the model's curves. The kicker, however, is that the dress responds to the cues of the wearer: If the dress senses that someone undesirable is approaching the wearer, it flashes a warning.

Synapse, however, is warm milk compared to Wipprecht's spider dress, which unfolds menacingly at the wearer's command. Creepy!